As expected (and still playing semi-casually), my “exploration” tendencies (helped greatly once I unlocked the mount) ended up driving me to uncover the fog of war for the entire map (I’m playing through the beginning of Act VI which allows me to complete the Caldeum zone). This “completionist” aspect when it comes to revealing the map, is my huge weak spot (where I’ll keep thinking, “just a little more”, and then I find myself still at it an hour later). I even ran through the two PvP zones (Fields of Hatred); the only time I saw another player there was in the hub – I was even able to perform the extractions at the altars for my seeds (I have to say these two PvP zones aren’t that large and don’t think they’ll be of much interest even to PvP’ers except for the initial curiosity).
Speaking of which, I rarely was on server shards with other players (including even event areas). What I saw a lot of was a player running in front of me, disappearing into their own instance (more often when you were transitioning to/from a quest). Overall, it seems like the game (while most players are still in the questing phase) is trying to give players a more solo adventurers feel to the environment. For myself, I sort of wished you could see a bit more players while exploring.
As for my regional renowns, I have about 90% of the Lilith altars completed, 98% of the waypoints unlocked, and 85% of the strongholds done. Basically, I have my 9 charges of health potions already done and am just working to get my skill point from the Hawezar region. Once I unlock world tier 3, I’ll focus on the rest of the renowns (which is going to be mostly completely the dungeons/cellars I haven’t done yet and all of those side quests).
Playing through the campaign and doing the above activities, has me at level 44 as of this writing (which is about where you want to be for this final leg of the MSQ). I should be able to hit 50 and begin the end game journey within the day (I may try the capstone dungeon once I complete the campaign rather than trying it right at level 50). My leveling build (Ice Shard sorc) is still only semi-functional though due to lack of cooldown reduction, so I expect there to be some pain points transitioning into WT3 until I get some base Sacred drops.
Finally, having now discovered all zones in the game, the game world still feels like its just a lot of areas, but ones that are mostly forgettable; I still wish there were some actual memorable locales for a town or major hub (yes, there are some now old haunts from previous versions that you revisit, but they aren’t actual hubs). Overall, the large world design seems to be made as an intended “time sink” even with use of a mount.
I’m still curious as to how my end game experience will be (I still remember how jarring that transition was in D3 when I first entered Act II on the pre-nerf Inferno, and was dunked immediately by the trash mobs at the start).
UPDATE: completed the story (Act VI was pretty good; it’s too bad the entire campaign wasn’t like this). As expected, the cinematics were incredible. The ending is clearly meant for the expansions (and bringing the focus back to the prime evils).
